I was taught that way back when I was in sales, to ask for a report card from clients ESPECIALLY when you think it’s going to be a bad one. This gives you a chance to address the issues with the client, let them know you are listening and concerned, and turn those issues around.  Plus you get extra points for being proactive.

Many companies that are reluctant to dive into social media tell me that they are afraid of their brand being “out there” for public criticism — whether it is deserved or not. Reputation management is one of the key objectives for which SMM (social media marketing) can be used, and that same “report card” lesson applies.

No one can debate the benefits that a good review or customer comment can provide to any business.  But a bad review, or blog/Twitter comment, can be just as useful if it is addressed correctly and in a timely manner. Below are some tips on how to make lemonade out of that potential lemon of a review.

Assess the damage –

• Take some time to figure out what kind of comment it is, how it’s intended and where it’s coming from.
• Is it constructive criticism? If the customer truly caught a problem and is bringing it to your attention, that’s a very good thing.
• Is it seemingly well intentioned?  The tone, message, or verbiage may be cutting but is the intention good — to help you as a business owner recognize a problem and address it.
• Is it venting after a frustrating experience?  The venting might be volatile and angry, but if it’s ultimately helping you recognize a problem, it’s still a good thing.
• Does it sound just hurtful?  You know pure anger when you hear it.  You may then decide whether or not to respond.

Decide how you are going to respond, but whatever it is, respond quickly.

• Be sure to respond directly and personally (in tone) and don’t hide behind corporate speak
• Stay proactive, positive and productive
• Don’t ever be defensive – that never helps anything.
• If criticism identifies a real problem – cop to it, offer information on solutions that are already in progress, or at least offer some info on your intention to address the issues.
• If reviewer discussion is too hot and you do want to respond and find that it is appropriate to respond, then take it off line. Provide an 800 number or email address or just your business phone number and invite the commenter to call to figure it all out.

When NOT to react –

• If you are too angry – chill for a day or so.  Reacting in the heat of battle will never result in anything positive
• If the reviewer is angry at the world, not necessarily your business
• If the review is spamming or trolling, just looking for linking or trackbacks – just ignore it. This is one of the artful aspects of good PR – knowing when NOT to make a mountain out of a molehill.

Even a bad review can be good.  Remember that mantra of social media connect/create/engage. The secret sauce is transparency. A bad review addressed is a very good thing. Don’t be afraid to have your brand out there, it’s all good.

David Spark

I’m delighted to announce that my friend and collegue David Spark of Spark Media Solutions will be joining us for an inteview August 11, 2010, at noon Pacific Time (3 pm Eastern).  David’s topic will be “Blogging for Business – for People Who Have NO Time to Blog”.

You my know David from his regular TV appearances or reading his many articles and columns. He is a 14-year veteran tech journalist and founder of Spark Media Solutions, specialists in developing industry voice through storytelling and social media. David has written for more than 30 media outlets in print, radio, and TV including eWEEK, PCWorld, TechTV, and Wired News. He’s currently a regular contributor to ABC Radio, Mashable, Socialmedia.biz, KQED, and John C. Dvorak’s “Cranky Geeks.” Spark blogs regularly at the Spark Minute.

David is a wonderful speaker and a fun interview, but he is also very practical.  David will give us some great tips on how to make the blogging process a part of your daily business life, and keep the creation of blog material seamless as well as painless.

Please join us!  Sign up below and we will send you an email with dial-in information.

Brown Sugar Kitchen is an absolutely wonderful “new style down home” cafe in West Oakland. I’ve watched them with increasing admiration since they appeared both on Mandela Parkway and on Twitter and Facebook. I’m doing an interview with Phil Surkis, one of the owners of BSK on his social media strategy, which is wonderful to behold.

I should explain. BSK is in the middle of an industrial area, which is to say, almost nowhere. There is no foot traffic, no retail buzz, no reason to be in the nabe except to pick up pipe for that construction project, or to drive by on your way to IKEA or Best Buy.

But somehow (and my bet is thru Tanya’s excellent food and Phil’s wonderful touch with their social media efforts) they have built a standing-room-only crowd on weekends — and some weekdays as well.

So, in my new series of interviews on the use of social media for small businesses, I’ve asked Phil to share his secrets. If you have any kind of small biz, retail store or restaurant, I’m sure you will get lots of great ideas to incorporate with your social media marketing plan. And maybe a recipe or two…can’t promise, though.

When: Monday June 14th, 1 pm Pacific time

If you would like an audio file of the interview, please sign up below.

Most business professionals are on LinkedIn at this point.  LI tells us that:

•LinkedIn has over 65 million members in over 200 countries.
•A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second, and about half of our members are outside the U.S.
•Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members.

To me that says clearly that if you have almost ANY kind of business and are prospecting, LI will be a good resource for you.  But just setting up a profile and dabbling once a week or so is not going to do much for your prospecting efforts.  Below are a few tips that not many folks know about, but are powerful techniques for increasing your visibility and maximizing that “inbound marketing” that Social Media is known for.

 1. Using LI to research potential prospects? You can create 3 saved searches.  If you are doing a search on a person, save your searches.  Once you have done a search from the search box in the upper right of your home page, you will see your results.  At the top where you see the number of records in your search you’ll see a “save this search” button. LI will give you the option of sending you a weekly email, to get updates to your search.  Great ongoing tool!

2. Recommendations are important, so ask for them. Companies, people and brands are evaluated by who else like them.  But make it easy.  First call or email your contact and ask if they will recommend you.  If so, write the recommendation yourself. Not only will you be sure that you are positioning yourself in the best light, but you will make it much easier for your contact to provide the referral.  All they need to do is cut and paste. Easy.

3. Use the Question and Answer area to gain more visibility on the Internet.  On the question that you answer you will see a “share this” with a drop down menu.  You can email your network, Digg it, Bookmark the question on Delicious, or use the link provided in your answer and link to your one of your blog posts, or somewhere else on your site to pull in traffic.  Great for online visibility, gaining credibility and helping people find you.

4. Join groups that are in-line with your business, your objectives or a desired job.  Fish where the fish are.  The more “on target” the group, the more valuable the content they provide, and the greater the networking opportunities (and ultimately leads) will be.

5. Use groups to expand your network, but be selective.  In the groups tabs, you will see one called “other” with a drop down menu.  Select members and you will see a list of all of the members in that group.  Offer to connect with the ones that make sense.  You might evaluate based on the size of their network, the type of company or industry they are in or how much interaction they have had with the group.

6. Did you know you can export your connections? Go to “Contacts.” then “Connections.” At the bottom of your Connections box is “Export Connections.” Export the connections and import them into your preferred address book.  Do this frequently so you are consolidating all of your contacts in one spot (might be Outlook, Act, Salesforce)

I’m doing another free teleclass on using Social Media to generate leads and build sales on Wed, May 12 at 1 pm Pacific Time, 4 pm Eastern.  Register here to join me.  I’ll send you dial-in information the day before the event.

I started this class because, after conducting a monthly breakfast meeting on Social Media for the SVAMA, it became clear to me that the small business was not getting the kind of strategic direction that they really needed.  Everyone will say that they are using Social Media.  They are on Twitter, or have a Facebook profile, but few really understand how to use Social Media strategically.  It’s a marketing powerhouse if used effectively and I want to give all businesses the tools to do just that.

So please join me.  If you can’t make the class live, sign up anyway!  I’ll be recording the class and will send everyone who signs up an audio file the following day.

Hope to see you there!

I never thought I’d say this, but my mail box is starting to get full again.  Brands and agencies seem to be slowly returning to the tried and true method of direct mail.  Perhaps our email inboxes are getting too full, or the online world is just getting too cluttered. Or the marketing people have realized that they have been missing an important piece of the marketing puzzle all along.  But direct mail is becoming more sophisticated as technology is allowing for more capabilities.   Even if you are going to mail a simple post card (very powerful, by the way), below are a few trends that you might want to take into consideration:

Direct Mail/Social Media integration
Including a brand’s Twitter handle, and Facebook page URL is becoming as frequent as the old 800 number used to be.  As companies become more creative about how they use social networking sites for tightly timed discounts, offers and coupons exclusive to the social sites, it makes only good marketing sense to groom your customers and prospects to be on the lookout by sending them to there with each of your mailings.  

Personalized and customized mailings  Improved data capture, database enhancements all allow for a more robust body of information on each customer.  This translates, with digitized printing, into the abilty to create more targeted and personal messages. Personalisation in itself is not new but in the coming months we will see it move to a new level, making reference to past purchasing behavior and suggested next purchases. Companies who find ways to personalize communications will continue to see a better response.

Using direct mail to drive web traffic – Given all of the above capabilities with customer data. Some smart marketers and sending readers not to the home page, but customized mini sites based on the recipients data. – Transaction history, advanced demographic info all can point reader to a very individualized experience.

Marketing automation to cross and up sell
Once the province of the major CRM companies (think Salesforce.com) now the ability to automate a multi channel contact strategy is filtering down to smaller companies with smaller budgets. A well targeted direct mail piece might have a call-to-action for an offer that is only available online. Once that customer has clicked to the site, a chain of auto-responder emails is initiated that will hopefully move the prospect further down the purchasing decision making process. Each step the customer takes is recorded in their customer record, to encourage future even more intelligent marketing activities.  The technology has become more sophisticated and less expensive in the last year or so, and will only get better with time.

I started using Social Media to promote my business 3 years ago, without much real knowledge about the whys and wherefores.  I wasted a tremendous amount of time – Tweeting now and then, connecting on Facebook with whoever seemed like a likely prospect and getting distracted by numerous small and unimportant social media sites.  

Does this sound familiar?

I was tired and frustrated with the trial and error of “trying” social media. I had no real strategy, or understanding of the power of the medium and knew I was missing out on a lot of potential business and can’t even imagine the
amount of billable time I wasted on this fruitless exploration. 

Over the next 3 years, I made it my job to take classes and webinars, read blogs, and follow the thought leaders of social media.  Now, I am armed with the critical knowledge needed in order to take advantage of all of the social media tools that help businesses grow, and I want to share it with you. 

Did you know that social media is the number one source for lead generation for our company? And these are WARM prospects – people who are coming to us ready to sign a check…or pretty close.

Let me save you all of that wasted time and money.

Why make the same mistakes I made?  

I’ve put together all of that hard earned expertise into a content rich and action directed teleseries.

I’ll take you step-by-step through the process of setting up a social media strategy without the headaches, miss-steps and wasted time.

Grab your spot NOW…the class starts on Tuesday April 27th and I don’t want you to miss a thing!

Hope to see you on the call.

Customer Service problems can be daunting for any company. But the last thing you want to do is pretend that they don’t exist or will never exist. The best thing to do is meet them head on, resolve issues, make the customer as happy as possible, and move on. The last thing you want to even consider is ignoring an unhappy customer or client.

Customer Service and Twitter.com were made for each other. The immediacy of Twitter, coupled with the accessibility of the customer-service “fixer” creates a terrific tool for staying in close and concerned contact with customers. And they feel the love. Below are a few tips to make this successful:

• Let your customers know about your presence on Twitter, at least to resolve issues. Post your Twitter “handle” throughout your own website. Send an a informative email to your customers letting them know that you will be available on Twitter if they need help, blog about it in company blogs. Make the Twitter handle that will be used for customer service visible and easily found throughout your online presence.
• Be proactive. Go looking for problems or mentions. This is not the time to be shy or keep your head in the sand! Search out your company name frequently. Create a search for your company name, brand name, product names in Tweetdeck, Hootsuite or Seesmec and save these searches. That way you will always be aware when anyone in the Twittersphere is talking about you (positively or negatively) or has problems. Tweetbeep and Monniter are two applications that will alert you when your company is mentioned.
• Take the right tone. Gather information on the problem, never point fingers, don’t be defensive. Be authentic in your attempts to solve the customer’s problem. Be sure the end result is positive — at least in feel — for the customer.
• If it can’t be resolved in 140 characters of Tweet text, or if the problem is sensitive, or if the customer is very upset, then give directions for a next step — an 800 toll-free phone number, a specific email address (spelled out) so that a final solution can be achieved in a more private setting.
• Be very timely. Twitter happens at the speed of light. Negative info travels even faster. Check Tweets frequently for any hint of problems, and jump right on them.

Twitter aside, one of the best things you can do to build and reinforce your brand is to take customer service very seriously. A problem will only get worse, and a customer will only get increasingly unhappy if the issue is not acknowledged. Companies will get far more “points” for being proactive in their efforts to resolve even horrendous problems to the best of their ability. The resolution may not be perfect in the customer’s or the public’s eye, but a true and strong effort to resolve will go far towards saving the loyalty of that person. Hopefully, they will spread the word and Tweet about the positive outcome, not the bad experience.

I’m thrilled to be the guest speaker at renown business coach Kellie D’Andrea’s weekly “Marketing Mondays” tele-class on April 12th. Here is Kellie’s write-up:

Business Coach Kellie D'Andrea

Q: Are you curious about social media?
Q: Interesting in adding social media to your marketing mix?

A: Well, you don’t want to miss this call!

“Generate Leads and Increase Sales with Social Media” during Marketing Mondays with Kellie D’Andrea.

WHEN: MONDAY, April 12, 2010, 6 pm Eastern (NY) time (That’s 5 pm Central, 4 pm Mountain, 3 pm Pacific.)

WHERE: Virtual Sign up to get call in information TIME: 6 pm Eastern (NY) time (That’s 5 pm Central, 4 pm Mountain, 3 pm Pacific.)

Today the owner of a small business is struggling with a bad economy, declining sales and not enough resources to get the job done. Marketing for small business usually takes a back seat – just when it’s needed most! Social media adoption by small businesses doubled during the last year, from 12% to 24%. And among those, nearly half anticipate it will be profitable within the next 12 months, according to the Small Business Success Index.
Join my special guest Elyse Tager, Social Media Strategist as she teaches you about social media, why it is important to add to your marketing mix and how to get started! By the time you leave this call, you WILL possess the knowledge to start on social media right away!! You don’t want to miss this one.

During this call, you will learn:

• “Tweet what” – “Friend Me” & “Fan Pages” Oh my! You will learn exactly what social media is and how it can be best used for small business owners or the entrepreneur. (and yes, we are going to teach you what sites you need to be part of!)
• Exactly how to get started in Social Media. We are going to teach you how to identify your goals and objectives for using social media and how to build a plan so you are successful in social media.
• Where to focus your energy and where the best place to start. We are going to teach you best practices, tips and tools that if you apply, will lead to optimal results (keyword focused profiles, building your network for targeted reach, where to focus your attention)
• Plus, and I saved the best for last, a SPECIAL invitation to a workshop that will teach you everything you need to know about Social Media!

About our Guest Speaker:
Elyse Tager, Social Media Strategist and founder of Elymedia will give you a brief overview of Social Media and a how you can get started with a plan that is right for your business, no matter what business you are in. See how this very cost-effective marketing tool can increase your visibility, provide a stream of leads and increase sales in very little time.

- – - – - -

Thanks Kellie! Hope to see lots of you on the call!

Social Media is about 3 things — connecting, creating, and engaging. Sounds easy enough, but the value of everything you do using social media will all go back to who you are engaging with.  This is a real case of “garbage-in, garbage-out.” If you “friend” or connect with anyone and everyone without any concern about who or why, you won’t get much out of all the time you may invest in your social media strategy. To make your social media strategy productive, efficient and successful, here are tips on creating a strong network.

There are two preliminary steps that are critical: First, have your target audience in mind. Your services/offer/store/business won’t appeal to the entire world. Are you focusing on small business, a particular industry, a certain demographic, or a geographic region? Keep this on top of mind whenever you decide to seek out or accept connections. Second, have your objectives in mind. Are you creating visibility for your brand, driving traffic to your website, selling product? These questions may be harder to fold into your decision-making process, but keep them in the back of your mind as you proceed.

• Start out with a group of people/clients/prospects that you KNOW are the right audience for you, and connect with these folks first. Upload from your Outlook, ACT, GMail, AOL databases and invite all that make sense.
• Search your connection’s connections. Who are they connected to?  If it’s a good business contact, chances are their connections/friends will work for you as well.
• Are there industry thought-leaders who talk about your topic? Connect with them. Who are THEY connected to?
• LinkedIn and Facebook make suggestions — examine these daily for more possible additions.
• Search for your old contacts, school-mates, work-mates, soccer-team buddies, church friends. These may be great direct sources for business (or they might not?) or may be great for referrals. Peruse membership of relevant groups — connect with members
• If you have been ReTweeted on Twitter, connect with that person.
• Ask a carefully- and strategically-chosen question on LinkedIn. Connect with the responders.
• Has anyone commentrd on your status post in Facebook or LinkedIn?  Would they be a good connection?
• Use strategic hashtags in your Tweets to have people interested in your topic find and connect with you, then connect back
• Use the search function for Twitter http://www.search.twitter.com and use the advanced mode. Target well and you will find many great potential connections. Save it as a feed and you can revisit daily to find more good connections.

My own Point of View: beware of the applications that promise to connect you to hundreds and thousands of people. They will. But so what? Quality and relevance trumps quantity.

It’s important to keep expanding your connections in social media. But always be sure there is a well-thought-out strategy every time you go through the exercise. The quality of your network, and the payback it will give you, will be worth the extra time.

I’m delighted to announce the agenda for the March meeting of the Morning Forum on Emerging Media.

SVAMA Presents:

Twitter for Marketers: Lessons from the Enterprise

Learn about the best practices of how big brands use Twitter to engage in real life conversations with customers. You will be presented with real case studies from the social media managers who are responsible for driving customer engagement at Cisco and HP. They will present case study examples of how they drive consumer engagement on the social web. We will discuss:

• How organizations use Twitter?
• What happens if there is negative feedback about your brand?
• Is there a process for filtering feedback back to the appropriate SMEs (subject Matter Experts)?
• How important is integration of Twitter when using other social media channels?
• How important is having a twitter strategy across the organization?

Moderator: Tatyana Kanzaveli

Panelists: LaSandra Brill, Sr. Manager – Digital and Social Media Marketing, Cisco; Tony Welch, Lead Social Media Strategist and Community Manager for HP PSG, HP

WHEN: March 30 , 2010, 8:30 – 10 AM

WHERE: [NOTE NEW LOCATION]
UCSC Extension in Silicon Valley
2505 Augustine Drive, Suite 100
Santa Clara, CA 95054

COST: Currently $5 SVAMA members, $15 for non-members

RSVP: info@elymedia.com

Speaker bios:

Tatyana Kanzaveli, CEO of Social CRM World, has broad experience in sales, marketing and business development, technology and professional services. She held executive roles in number of start-ups and large multinationals. She was an early adopter of social media and social networking channels, using them to build successful online and face-to-face communities. Tatyana runs strategic Social CRM and social media marketing consultancy – http://scrmworld.com. She can be reached on Twitter: @glfceo

LaSandra Brill, Sr. Mgr, Digital & Social Media Marketing, at Cisco Systems, is a social media enthusiast, avid blogger and marketing innovator. As Senior Manager of the Service Provider Digital & Social Media Marketing group, LaSandra Brill shapes Cisco’s marketing strategy to include a mix of social media marketing techniques leveraging Web 2.0 technologies. At Cisco she is known for building and executing the social media strategy of one of the top five product launches in company history. LaSandra holds a Bachelors of Science in Business Administration with a concentration in Management from San Jose State University.

Tony “Frosty” Welch is the Lead Social Media Strategist for HP PSG, and the Community Manager for The Next Bench – http://www.thenextbench.com. His Twitter handle is @frostola

Hope to see you there!

I’m in love with my new FlipCamera and like a little kid, am carrying it around everywhere I go. 

Unleash your inner James Cameron

Video is becoming a common communication tool.  These inexpensive and very portable cameras have made video production a snap.  But there are a lot of horrible and ineffective videos out there. Video is best suited for product demos, intensive discussion, interviews, client testimonials, or establishing thought leadership.  Here are 10 tips that will help you create excellent footage – not just add to the visual clutter:

• Format is important. Keep it short — 3-5 minutes will hold your audience’s attention.
• Commit to some frequency — a weekly or bi-monthly series will build momentum.
• Use established third-party sites and services for delivery (examples: YouTube,  blinkx.com, Vimeo and others) along with posting videos on your own site.
• Test for compatibility with all Web browsers, plug-ins, and operating-systems.
• Record several takes and edit the best parts of each one into a single video.
• Smile!
• Vary the tone and pitch of your voice — do not speak in a monotone.
• Move your head when speaking to help emphasize your words. Use subtle movements of your head when speaking to help emphasize what you say, along with eyebrow movements, widening their eyes, pursing their lips, and other facial “punctuation marks.”
• Look at yourself in the mirror beforehand and make sure you look good, that your hair is in place, and that you don’t have a collar or a tag turned up or worse. Don’t trust the image on the screen — use a mirror and look at yourself closely.
• Learn your editing software and be reasonably proficient in it. You should be able to:
  • Cut and rearrange clips
  • Add titles, transitions, and effects
  • Blend or overlap scenes
  • Add separate audio tracks
  • Modify audio levels

If you haven’t introduced video into your marketing activites by now, run out and buy one of these tiny gems.  You may be surprised at your own creativity!

If you are a small business with a retail or at least street-facing presence you are probably already taking good advantage of Yelp, YahooLocal, Citysearch and others.    But even businesses like professional services (lawyers, architects, CPA firms, ad agencies, doctors) should be sure to include these sites in their marketing mix.  And now is the time to revisit them.  As Social Media continues to explode, they are all introducing more SM features that will allow you to create current and fresh content and be even more “findable”. 

Yelp, is the grandaddy of social media meets local business.  If you set up your page awhile back, revisit it and do so frequently, to be sure that it is as robust and current as you can manage.  Are there recent picture or videos you can upload?  Have you updated services that have come about due to a flagging economy?  Take another look and be sure you are maximizing your presence.

Google Local Business Place Pages has just added a status block so you can update your page with immediate messages, links to specials, and other interest generating content in a short-form. Unfortunately, there is no way yet to link that update to Twitter or Facebook or anything else – more work for the poster, but still a great new feature.   Another addition: businesses that have been “claimed” by their owners will now feature a badge indicated the credibility of the posting. 

Citysearch has just added a social media component to their listings as well. New features from Citysearch:  Twitter handles can be added to your account and Citysearch consumers can receive your Tweets  Also included will be a link to your Facebook Fan Page so Citysearch consumers can “become a fan” of your business.

Up and comer business directory MerchantCircle has been steadily growing as an online network and business directory for merchants in smaller towns to advertise to consumers. To help Local Businesses get more customers online, they’ve developed a free local business social network where business owners can promote their business by uploading pictures, writing blogs, publicizing events, creating coupons and newsletters, and connecting with other merchants. MerchantCircle has long targeted its site’s features towards merchants versus catering towards the consumer, as sites like Yelp and CitySearch do. Last month, the network has hit a milestone by signing up its one millionth merchant. Not too shabby for the business directory, considering there are an estimated 15 million local merchants in the U.S. today.

We are doing more and more marketing and media plans for local businesses using a heavy emphasis on social media where appropriate.  If we can help  your business, give us a holler.

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by the very smart Zoya Fallah at Cisco for their service provider blog called SP360, on the topic of the use of Social Media. Cisco continues to lead the charge in using Social Media to reach out to their customers and has multiple blogs, YouTube channels, promotional campaigns and on and on for connecting to their very diverse audiences. Hats off to Cisco — one of the earliest adopters of Social Media.

Today Twitter announced their ability to help new users get started by suggesting accounts to follow.  According to their blog post:

“Two of the biggest challenges for new users have been finding accounts to follow that appeal to their interests, and finding their friends and colleagues who tweet. Over time, we’ve learned that by making suggestions of who to follow, we can help users get going more easily on Twitter. In our new design, we’re taking some steps to continue to improve this process. Once a user signs up and selects what they’re interested in, we show them some accounts that relate to that interest. Next, we help them find their friends and colleagues by checking their address books, and third we give them a chance to search for anyone we or they missed in this process.”

I’m all for that.  Anything that helps a newbie use Twitter in a strategic and useful way is all good.  But why only the new user?  I’d love the benefit of their algorythmic magic to make good suggestions for me.  But I’m not the only one with that thought. (love John Battelle)

Twitter promised more changes to come.  As a true evangelist, I can’t wait.

The new year has brought a number of inquiries from smaller companies asking for help with social media marketing and marketing in general.  For those of us in the marketing field, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that not all businesses see things from a marketing perspective. Example: we had an end-of-year meeting with our CPA firm and will be doing some marketing consultation for them, I’m happy to say. This is a women-owned firm, brilliant in the world of finance, tax prep and financial planning, but not big enough to warrant an in-house marketing expert. We mapped out some initial strategy, to capitalize on the lowest hanging fruit, and I thought I’d recap our discussion for the benefit of other small companies.

Know who your customers are so you can find more like them. Conduct a survey to find out what industry they are in, how many employees they have, general geography (how close or far away do you want to service a customer?)

Establish some initial objectives. Are you prospecting and looking for new leads?  Introducing new products or services to current customers, asking for feedback on current performance?

Start an ongoing conversation with your current customers. Start a monthly e-newsletter, and before that, start gathering email addresses from everyone you do business with to that end.  Assuming they have a website, start a blog to post updated information about the company more frequently and to start that dialog with your customers.

Social Media Marketing. If your customers and prospects are participating in social media networks, pick an objective for your social media presence, and get started with a well-thought-through SM plan and schedule.  We talked a bit about using Social Media for local marketing in an earlier post.

Establish the initial strategy — but make it simple.  Small companies don’t have marketing departments, so be sure the objectives are manageable.  Decide on tactics, the person or people who will be actually doing the work, and set a schedule.  Then keep it.

Thanksgiving is coming and, as I spend more and more time in front of my computer or with my cell phone — hopping between Twitter, Facebook and what feels like millions of blogs and RSS feeds — I’m careful to be thankful and not to lose track of what’s really important (too easy to do in the race to keep up with the “media” world).

A quickie compare-and-contrast….

The real purpose of social media:

Connecting - I’ve made many friends, virtual and otherwise in the past year, either on Social Media sites, or around the topic of Social Media — at meetings, events, Tweetups. I’m humbled and grateful.

Providing value – It’s a constant mantra — to be sure that what messages I’m sending, tweeting or posting have something to offer to someone. Intelligence on the media industry, news items, items I find quirky and worth sharing, a link to a great song or recipe (what’s life, especially online, if you don’t have a sense of humor?).

Creating community - Groups, tribes, clusters, pods of like-minded people who can share.  Find them, join them, create them, link to them.

And then translate the above values into what my husband calls “wetware” — real live human interaction….

Connecting: Pick up the phone instead of sending an email, go OUT to lunch instead of eating it at your desk, wander down the hall and talk to a compadre if you are destined to be in the office. Flesh — press it.

Providing value: Donate time to a local charity, or give a few cans to the Boy Scouts food drive this year, read to your local kindergarten class — and even if just once, explain once again to your dad what it is that you do for a living. Talk to people, talk talk talk.

Creating community: Invite two new people to dinner or for a glass of wine at your house who didn’t know each other before (takeout food is OK; Martha Stewart is not taking notes). Extra points if they bring their kids (then pizza is really OK!).

Happy Thanksgiving, both online and off. May the latter continue to prevail.

We have been working on a large lead-generation campaign for a new consumer-biz client, and we were delighted that they allowed us to incorporate social media into the plan. I know, it seems counter-intuitive to use social media for a mainly commercial objective, but if it is handled delicately and with respect for both the brand and the SM audience, it can be done very well.

Below are a few pointers that should be taken into consideration:

– Social Media is all about creating and joining community and adding value. Keep this ahead of everything else.

– First join the community – join many groups and participate, linking back to your offer every now and again. Build your network with keyword or category searches to find good prospects and interested followers.

– Be strategic – your messages should vary by target audience, the landing page should echo the content of the original message or post, and the ultimate call-to-action wording should support both.

– Content – Decide what issues and topics are interesting for your target audience. Invest some time to become a member of the community. First listen in, then ask questions, and only then define whatever your target group is excited about and what topics you should be addressing. Your content is about establishing a relationship with your community, not about re-purposing your sales presentation.

– Be sure your posts are a combination of conversation and links to your offer. We aim for at least 50% posts providing info on relevant topics, asking questions, responding to followers, and 50% talking about our offer and providing a link to our landing page.

– Standard lead-gen practices hold for Social Media – convert with the landing page.  As is true with any lead-gen strategy, the landing page does the heavy lifting.  It should be clear and simple, with a crystal-clear call to action.  Don’t offer options or links taking the reader off the page. The registration form should appear above the fold. Assume your reader will not be scrolling down, so keep all the salient points up top.

– SM offers wonderful opportunites for viral content to happen.  You can’t control it, but here’s some clues on what gets shared and what doesn’t…. Rarely shared: product info, free trials, hard offers, selling posts. Often shared: New Data, trends, funny videos, reference to top-notch blog posts.

We will continue this topic in future posts with more specifics on how to use Twitter, Facebook. and LinkedIn for lead-generation with specific tactics for each.

The key is to be a participant in a community, and provide value to create enough interest so that your followers and readers will want to find out more about your offer.  It CAN be done.

My BFF Daisy Whitney will be presenting to the Silicon Valley American Marketing Association (SVAMA) Morning Forum in September 2009. She has kindly agreed to get up at an ungodly hour and appear pre-coffee…or close to it, to enlighten us all about the best use of online video. Here are the details:

SVAMA Presents: “The Seven Secrets to Success with Online Video”

Who’s watching video online? What are they watching? Where are they going to see videos? Do they watch alone or with friends and family? And, most important, do they pay attention to the ads? Learn about the new consumer behavior online, how viewers are shifting to the Web and to see what, and which kinds of ads are following consumers online. This presentation will also detail new initiatives by brands to market themselves through the Web, either in developing their own Web shows or by sponsoring existing online-video projects and TV shows.

SPEAKER: DAISY WHITNEY, writer, producer, on-air correspondent

WHEN: Tuesday, Sept 22, 2009; 8:30 – 10:00 am

WHERE: Scott’s Seafood Restaurant and Grill, 855 El Camino Real (Town and Country Shopping Center, at Embarcadero and El Camino Real), Palo Alto, CA 94301; Tel. (650) 323-1555

COST: Currently $5 for SVAMA members, $15 for non-members

NOTE: Venue requires breakfast be purchased

RSVP: info@elymedia.com

Don’t miss this! Daisy is a whirlwind of information — and tons of fun.

— Elyse Tager

Another wonderful example of Social Media blending with hard copy is the evolution of Food52, a crowd-sourced social-media recipe/food site started by Amanda Hesser (of NY Times fame) and Merrill Stubbs freelance food-writer and recipe-tester. This site invites viewers to submit recipes — themed each week, for a contest. Amanda and Merrill test each recipe, come up with 2 finalists,  and the readers will decide the winner. At the end of 52 weeks, the winning entries will be entered into a cookbook (hard copy — ink and paper!) that will be published by The HarperStudio.  In the meantime, the cooks, readers, and contributors get to share recipes, chat with each other, add additional content on related issues (ingredients, cooking tools, cookbooks etc) in an ongoing collaboration.

I was lucky enough to get an interview with Amanda and Merrill in between their frantic bouts of cooking. Click below and find out why Merrill’s mother is NOT, NOT, NOT allowed to submit recipes….

PLAY AUDIO:

AmandaAndMerrill_081209.mp3

So at the end, there is a hard-copy cookbook that will have had a full year’s worth of preliminary buzz. The Food52 team is busily tweeting, uploading videos to Vimeo, linking to other food blogs. It’s a win-win for the publisher, the reader/contributor, and the Food52 team of Merrill and Amanda.

Food 52 Intro from Food52 on Vimeo.